


Salt of the Dream

by furiedheart



Category: Chris Hemsworth - Fandom, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom, hiddlesworth - Fandom
Genre: Death, Hurt/Comfort, Imagine that, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, The Author Regrets Everything, hiddlesworth au, she is very sorry, there is NO sex in this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 00:08:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2487290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furiedheart/pseuds/furiedheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris has a nightmare and Tom is there to comfort him. Chris wakes to realize how wrong he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salt of the Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Hi Hi. So I wrote this drabble today after seeing [this](http://mi-delirio-es-el.tumblr.com/post/100511926018/otpprompts-imagine-person-a-waking-up-from-a). It's a short little thing, but I had to write it once I saw the prompt. I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry. Give me magazines and a lollipop and take my computer away from me.
> 
> Trigger warnings for: non-explicit major character death; thoughts and intentions of suicide. 
> 
> Beta'd by the most wonderful and loveliest person ever: duskyhuedladysatan <3

It was just as Chris feared. There wasn’t a wave in sight; the air still and humid and flat on the mirrored surface of the ocean. To his right lay the stretch of beach, burnt tan and spotted with black rocks. Tall and green trees encroached from the distance, not another soul around.

He sat hunched over on his board, the water warm and lapping at his thighs, ribbons of sunlight catching the grains of sand floating in the blue depths. He could barely see his feet. He shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted. Where was Tom? He twisted on his board, scanning the flat water. He wasn’t on the towel they’d left back on shore, he wasn’t near the edge as far as Chris could tell.

His shoulders and back burned, and he knew he shouldn’t but Chris scooped up some water to help alleviate the sting, albeit it momentarily.

A small splash sounded behind him and he turned fast, eyes narrowed on the murky water. He should go back in. Tom would want to return home by now. He always got so hungry after swimming all morning. But Chris still couldn’t spot him. He had been just here a moment ago. Hadn’t he?

Something bumped his foot. Something big and smooth and rubbery. Chris gasped and snapped his eyes down. Nothing there. Nothing there.

Like a child would draw their feet under the blankets when afraid of the dark, Chris suddenly wanted to bunch himself on the width of his board. But this was ridiculous. He’d never feared the water before. The great beasts never came this close to shore. It must have been a turtle or maybe a dolphin. But even as he thought about it, Chris doubted his own reasoning. Tom always said, never say never.

Bending low, he dipped his arms into the water and started paddling inland, heat rising from below him, feeling as if the center of the earth was boiling. And like a flare of light in a black sky, a voice shouted his name, far away, too far.

Chris turned, already sitting up. “Tom?” Beads of ocean glistened on his skin, pebbled down his arms, trickling onto his board. There was only silence.

But then something snapped sharply at his leg and he was dragged off the board and into the water. He screamed, mouth and lungs filling, salt blooming up his nose. Still attached by a tether to his board, he didn’t sink very far, but whatever had latched onto him released him quickly, disappearing into the murk with a quick tail flick.

Floating, lips pressed tight, Chris squinted, eyes burning. Where was it where was it where was it—

The skin along his back suddenly tightened and he knew, without a doubt, that it was behind him. He spun in the water, so slow, like the stuff nightmares are made from. Bubbles burst from his mouth as he screamed again, rows of teeth yawning before him.

Chris woke with a muted shriek, sitting up in bed, sheets tangled around his waist. Long arms were immediately embracing him.

Sleepy voice, so tender. “Chris? Oh darling, are you alright?”

Heart pounding, Chris dragged in air, eyeing the room at large, but it was still dark, just like the water had been, just like it had felt knowing the shark was only moments from killing him. Tom nudged at his jaw with his forehead, and Chris sighed, rubbing his eyes.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Hands tugged at him gently, and Chris let himself fall back on the bed. Tom immediately pulled him into his arms, cradling Chris’s face to his throat. Fingers carded into his hair. His heart still beat rapidly, and Chris swallowed, trying to calm himself down.

“My darling,” Tom whispered. “Was it that silly fish again?”

Chris huffed, exhausted and half asleep already. “Not a fish. A deadly predator. And he always finds me.”

“Now, now, my giant,” Tom cooed, smoothing a palm down his cheek, kissing the crown of his head. His stubble rasped quietly against his long, thin fingers. So elegant, those fingers. Chris kissed the pad of his thumb and Tom sighed. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. We’re home now, here in our bed, and I won’t let anything hurt you. You know I’ll always protect you, right?”

Chris nodded, humming in sleepy agreement.

“There now,” Tom whispered, rocking him. “Don’t be afraid. I will fight this world for you.”

Sleep began to shroud at his thoughts, but he could still feel Tom’s soft breaths on his face, their legs twining, feet slotting together. Chris soaked in the heat of Tom’s body. Such a lean man, Tom radiated the energy of a hundred suns, reminding Chris of white beaches and chocolate drinks and cuddles late in the night, in the dead of winter, his home.

“I couldn’t find you,” Chris murmured, half remembering something. “I looked and couldn’t…see…I couldn’t see you. But you were there, weren’t you? ”

Tom smiled against his forehead, running a hand down Chris’s spine, tucking the blanket close around him for warmth. He knew Chris loved it when he did that.

“I’m always here, my love. Always.”

Chris gave him another squeeze and sighed against his neck. In the morning, he would wake up and not remember what had frightened him, what had made his dream so lonely and terrible. They hadn’t opened the new box of pancake mix. He would make them some, that and bacon. And orange juice. And surprise Tom in bed with it. He smiled, the ridge of his nose bumping Tom’s Adam’s apple. Yes, he would do that, and they would spend the day in their room, the sound of the breaking surf drifting in through their window.

The dark blended into a thick balm over them, bleeding over the pale wisp of Tom’s skin, so that Chris tightened his hold, needing to be closer than before. Swaddled in that embrace, he drifted, eyes blinking slowly, the minute vibrations of Tom’s soft humming, some lullaby he’d once told Chris his sisters used to sing to him as a boy, pressing flat over his eyes. It tickled the fan of Chris’s eyelashes, but he didn’t stir. He was sinking, just as he’d sank into the waters of his nightmare, only this time Tom was there with him; he was there and he wasn’t lost and Chris felt suddenly the safest he’d felt in a long, long time.

It felt like only a minute later when an obnoxious ringing tore him from sleep again. Chris startled, tightening his arms instinctively around Tom. But they closed over nothing and he fell on his face, blow softened by cold blankets and the other pillow. Hands splayed wide, Chris blinked down at the empty space under him, mouth parted.

He was just here. Wasn’t he just here?

But no, the sheets had lost their scent of Tom two years ago. No matter how careful Chris had been with eating in bed and showering before sleep, he knew he would have to wash the sheets eventually, and all traces of Tom would be gone.

Because Tom was dead.

Chris rolled onto his back, pinging alarm forgotten. Rubbing his eyes, he felt his face crumple, the scent of coffee and cinnamon still in his nose.

“Tom,” he moaned, a wet sob tearing from him. Why wasn’t his death a terrible dream instead? Why did Chris have to continue like this, wretched and alone and despairing, and Tom couldn’t? Not to despair, never to despair, but to laugh with him, to hold him, and kiss him silly, straddling his waist and anchoring his wrists, pretending to be a dangerous robber and to give him all his money mister, or else. And Chris would let him. He would shiver and fake cry and beg to be let go, take it, take it all sir, just don’t hurt me. They would collapse into a fit of giggles, Chris upending Tom, crowding over him, kisses turning to low moans and shuddered gasps.

Just like they used to play.

Like they used to.

Only Tom had hurt him, and in the worst way possible. But Chris knew he hadn’t meant to go, and so he couldn’t be angry with him. In life or in death, Chris could never be angry with Tom.

Hot tears leaked down his temples, but he didn’t wipe them. He never did. He always let them dry on his skin, tasting like the salt of the dream that forever woke him, that forever meant Tom would hush and murmur and sing him to sleep again.

Suddenly angry, Chris rose and slammed a fist on the clock next to his bed. The room fell silent. Throwing the blankets off, he walked to his closet and rummaged around the top shelf. Bringing down the box, he stared at it in his hands, the heavy bulk of it calming him. He’d bought it four months ago, after trying everything he thought he could to help relieve the crushing weight in his chest. But nothing had worked. Nothing could fit in his heart the way _he_ had, nothing to compare, nothing to make him stay, nothing that could convince him not to follow where he’d gone.

He had work that day, but he didn’t plan on going. Still he showered. Still he dressed warmly, wrapping himself in the blue and maroon scarf Tom would wear on cold days, padding around the apartment in wool socks and boxers. Still he dabbed the cologne Tom loved to spritz on himself, smearing a streak of it behind his ears, in the hollow of his throat. Lastly, he tucked the gun into the back of his jeans, thinking that maybe he would find a quiet corner of the world and smile for the first time in two years.

He didn’t see what the point of it was, but Chris paused at his door to lock it, glancing once more through the living room and into their bedroom, at the mussed sheets and the bunched pillows. If he squinted just right, if he was desperate enough, he might have believed that the rise of pillows was the slim slope of Tom’s hips under the blanket, that he was in there still, sleepy after staying up half the night comforting Chris from his dream.

And after all this time, Chris was desperate enough.

“Cool board!” came a small voice behind him.

Chris blinked and turned. A boy of about ten years stood on the landing to the stairs, eyes glued on something inside Chris’s apartment. Leaning against the wall by the sofa was his surfboard, out of use all these months, not a body of water within a hundred miles.

“Thanks,” he said gruffly, clearing his throat as he searched for the right key.

“I’m trying to convince my mom to get me one,” the boy said. “We go pretty frequently to the beach, and I always have to rent one at the shops by the main street.” He had that easy manner of voice, apparently comfortable with talking to complete strangers. But maybe he didn’t see Chris as a stranger. Maybe he saw him as the neighbor Chris had tried so valiantly never to become.

Chris nodded. “I was like that too, back home. Getting my own board was the best thing I could have done.”

“You lived by the sea?” The boy asked, eyebrows flying up to his hairline.

Chris paused. There was something about the boy’s wide smile, the bright twinkle in his eyes, the curious way he leaned a little to the left to continue gazing at Chris’s surfboard that reminded him of Tom.

“I used to live by water,” he admitted quietly. “I don’t anymore. But, uh, maybe I will again. Soon.”

The boy smiled and started to turn away.

“You know what?” Chris said, pulse spiking as he thought of something. “Here.” He went back inside and brought the board out to the boy, who stood with mouth parted, eyes popping in surprise. “You keep it. I plan on buying a new one where I’m going.”

The boy exclaimed happily, hands reverent and firm on the scratched and ragged fiberglass. Somewhere in Chris’s chest, his heart fluttered.

Throat working, he turned and started for the stairs.

“But wait!” the boy said, pointing uncertainly at his door. “You forgot to lock it.”

The keys jingled in Chris’s palm, but he didn’t hesitate. “I know,” he said, not turning back. “It’s okay. I’m not worried anymore.”

Chris left the boy standing outside his apartment, his feet carrying him faster and faster down the stairs, until he was running through the main lobby and out into the windy snow, his sights on warmer climes already.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> If anyone is interested, this is my [tumblr](http://mi-delirio-es-el.tumblr.com)
> 
> *hides*


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